Originally I was really excited for Graveyard Keeper because I love these kinds of management and sim and lifestyle games. It really made me think back to games like Stardew Valley and Moonlighter. I knew that I wanted to try it out, and around Christmas, the game went on sale so I went ahead and picked it up.

But apparently I'm guessing that I set my expectations too high and I ended up being a little disappointed by the game after testing it out for a few hours. It just felt way too slow for my liking and much of the style ended up being something that just didn't agree with me in the end.

I ended up finding the game to be pretty boring, especially near the start of the game and it wound up as one of my least favorite of all the Switch games that I played.

GRAPHICS: 7/10

For the most part, the graphics are very simple and indie-like. They definitely look a lot like the graphics you would see in Stardew Valley or The Escapists, with a little extra detail in some of the character designs and buildings.

This is an art style that I normally like, however when you couple them with the medieval time period, I started liking it less and less. To me at least, the colors and the environments felt bland at times to the point where I wasn't enjoying it as much as I would have enjoyed looking at a similar game that takes place in the modern world. Graphics is going to get a 7 out of 10.

SOUND: 7/10

The sound of Graveyard Keeper is pretty straightforward. The actual soundtrack of the game is pretty good and I think it fits in with the overall tone of the game pretty well. There weren't any tunes that I loved, but there weren't any that were bad. When it came to the regular sounds of the game, I thought they were okay most of the time. There were a couple times when I felt that the game was too loud and there were a couple sounds that just felt annoying at times. I think sound as a whole gets another 7 out of 10.

ADDICTIVENESS: 6/10

I was so excited for the game, thinking that it would be so much fun. But I guess my expectations were too high as a result of playing games like Stardew Valley and Moonlighter. I felt like the game started off way too slowly. For the first hour or so the game was just mostly explanations and introductions without the ability to do too much of the actual gameplay.

Plus some of the things that you actually need in order to progress like some materials were really hard to acquire near the start of the game. Not only that, but there wasn't really an indication as to what you were supposed to do half the time. Like there were some times where a character would tell you to go somewhere and they would give you a general idea of where that person is and then you'd be left trying to figure out where they are.

After a couple hours of playing I had accumulated a list of NPC's and I had forgotten half the stuff that I needed to do for them. By that point, I was pretty much wandering around aimlessly because I had no idea who I had to go to in order to progress the story and I didn't have the materials to do any of the other stuff.

The game does pick up after a while and allows you to create some form of routing but for the first couple hours it felt relatively slow and boring. I definitely wouldn't want to play through those first 2 to 3 hours again and some of the later stuff can get repetitive quickly. My grade for addictiveness is going to be a 6 out of 10.

STORY: 6/10

The story of Graveyard Keeper is pretty straightforward. It actually starts off in the modern world where you're this guy who gets hit by a car. You're probably dead. After getting hit, you're transported to this weird medieval world where you become the graveyard keeper, who's in charge of taking care of the church and graveyard while interacting with all the citizens of this world.

The bulk of the game is spent trying to repair the graveyard while also looking for a way to get back home. A large chunk of the story is told right at the start go the game through interaction with a bunch of different characters. I wasn't a fan of this because the dialogue felt inconsistent at times and didn't fit in with the environment.

Sometimes it just felt like the characters never the start were serving the purpose of a narrator more than being actual characters in the game, and that kind of broke the immersion at times. Plus I had a couple issues with the actual dialogue at times. The story isn't going to win any awards but it doesn't have to in a game that's more about the gameplay. 6 out of 10 for story.

DEPTH: 9/10

The depth would probably be the highlight of the game because there's a decent amount of things to do once you get the hang of things and after you get past all of the slow stuff. One of my favorite things about the game is that there's no enforced day night cycle. In Stardew Valley you have stamina that goes down as you do actions. You can eat to replenish stamina but then at the end of the day you have to go to bed or you pass out.

In Graveyard Keeper, you eat to replenish stamina but you won't pass out if you run out of stamina and nothing happens if you stay up too late. Heck, you can sleep in the middle of the day to quickly get stamina back and then play during the night. That helps raise the gameplay aspect because you aren't limited to what you can do based on the time.

There's also a nice assortment of characters to interact with especially in the village but the village is quite a walk away from your house. You live literally seconds away from the church and graveyard but if you have to go to the village every day you're going to be spending a large chunk of time walking back and forth.

Working on the graveyard and the area around your house can also be quite fun once you unlock all the stuff that you need and have enough resources but depending on how you play, it might take some time to get to that point in the game. My grade for depth is going to be a 9 out of 10.

DIFFICULTY: 4

I wouldn't say that the game is hard. It just requires a lot of patience near the start. When you first start playing and you're trying to unlock all the different aspects and things to do, it's going to feel a lot like Animal Crossing in the sense that there's going to be a ton of waiting for things to happen. If not waiting, it's going to be a lot of slow progression.

Then once you get to the point where things speed up, the game will be super easy, barely an inconvenience, where if you don't have enough of something, all you gotta do is go out into the world and collect more resources. The only problem I have with the difficulty is the fact that it can be hard to figure out what you have to do next at times.

OVERALL: 7/10

Overall, the game is okay but it's not as good as I was hoping for it to be. It's not a bad game but I wouldn't say that it'w worth the full $20 price tag, especially because of how slow the first couple of hours will feel. If you get past the slow start and keep playing, grinding away with the different things that you can do, then you should be able to get 40 hours or more out of this game, plus there's a couple DLC packs that add more things to do and more overall gameplay.

But if you're already on the fence about this genre or games like Stardew Valley and Moonlighter, then this game isn't for you, and you probably wouldn't even get past the first couple hours. If you do like the genre, or those games, then if you can get this game on sale, it's something that you should consider. My overall grade for Graveyard Keeper is going to be a 7 out of 10.